Tools

Where most other Cartoon Network Adult Swim shows are nothing but snarked-up jalopies salvaged from the Hanna-Barbera junkyard, Matt Maiellaro and Dave Willis' ATHF exists in its own little messy world populated by Frylock (voiced by Carey Means), a blaxploitation box of fries; Master Shake (Dana Snyder), who is indeed no smarter than your average dairy product; and Meatwad (Willis), who, with his squeaky voice and ability to take the shape of myriad meat products, might reasonably be described as "cute" were he not also covered in stray hairs. The trio really are little more than standard sitcom characters; they might as well be Jerry, Elaine, and George yadda-yadda-yadda'ing about nada. Only difference is, here you have a Terminator-like exercise machine sent from the future (or past, it's so hard to tell) to destroy the planet, an origin story involving the Sphinx, Abraham Lincoln, and the FBI, and the revelation that one of the main characters is another one's father and/or mother. But that's all so beside the point in a movie created by two guys who gorge on pop culture's high-fat diet and regurgitate that shit into something approaching . . . uh . . . art? Close enough.
ByRobert Wilonsky